C3C won't detect the CD

[steoc4]

This has been a recurring problem with many games actually, usually I get a no-cd patch(I figure there's nothing wrong with doing that since I've bought the game the normal way), but basically Civ 3 Conquests won't detect my cd, it says please insert the correct cd and restart the program. This happens even when I put the cd in, it autoruns, and I click run civ 3 conquests from the autoplay screen.
I have a feeling, although I'm probably completely wrong, that this only started happening to games when I installed a CDRW drive a while back. According to Windows XP my drives are a Toshiba SD-M1212 DVD/CD-ROM and my newer CDRW drive is a ARTEC WSM-YG52.
I've tried disabling the CDRW(and even plugging it out) then restarting to see if it makes a difference but it still doesn't.
I was playing C3C 1.0 with a no-cd patch, but I need to get the patch to fix up corruption and I can't do that unless I can get the game detecting the CD properly.
The original Civ 3 detects the cd fine by the way, and i know conquests cd is fine because ive run it on my other computer no problem.

[aleccipk]

I have the same problem you do. Every once and a while it does work, but usually it doesn't. Its definately the copy protection and I think it was dumb of them to do it that way.

[reboots computer]
[inserts Conquests CD]
[instead of autorun, get Window Media Player message]
[computer crashes]
[reboots computer]
[inserts Conquests CD]
[gets blue screen saying please insert CD]
[press enter, autorun appears]
[clicks play]
[Get message saying CD can't be found]
[press enter, doubleclicks shortcut]
[After 10 minutes, suddenly game launches! Yay!]

[steoc4]

Well I installed a clean install of windows on a seperate hard drive partition, and the game runs perfectly from that so it must be something in the registry?
I'm making do with this makeshift solution for now but I have so many things installed that I really don't want to do a clean install of windows or anything, so I reboot into my other partition just to play Civ 3 while I do everything else from my 'main' install of windows.

[vmxa1]

I know that 1.12 inroduced a new proection scheme. It broke my Alcohol120 installation. Igot an updated version of Alc120 and captured the image again and now it works fine.
So if you have a nocd patch, you need a new one, if one exist.

[Carenza]

I use one of the virtual CD programs which can read most protected discs and use that so I dont have to have the real disk in the drive.

It is not an advantage for CIV as there is no install options (you need disk space for the full game and the virtual image) but when a games allowa you to do a minimal or CD install i.e. leaving all the content on the disk this is good. It means that over all you use the same space as a full install but since you have a minimal install the CD content is being read off the virtual image with no real speed difference to the actual CD and if you do need the disk space back you can just delete the virtual image and continue playing the game with the real CD in the drive.

[steoc4]

I tried one of those virual CD things, Hekki CD or something I think it was called, whatever came up first and was free on download.com...
But even with that it was the exact same problem. It seems like the game is just assuming I don't have the CD without bothering to check. Definitely something with windows I reckon, because everythings still fine when I run it from my other partition with a clean install of windows.
I'm kind of used to switching partitions now after being doing it for the last week or two, think I'll just stick with this and not get any no-cd patches or anything until I find the 'real' solution to the problem with my cd drives.

[vmxa1]

stec4 get a trail of alcohol120 and see if that does not solve the problem. It works great for me on all of my games including C3C.
For the past year or so they have come up with tweaks for all the new schemes that have come out.
It will eat lots of disk space, but that is cheap. I use an 80GB drive to store most fo my images.
I keep my primary drive for the ones I play often.
Plus the 80 is fat32 so it can be used by non-XP boots. The primary is NTFS.